According to many people who lived through the last war, men and women died in order to ensure freedom for their children and subsequent generations. Others have given their lives to maintain freedom for those around them. However freedom is a quality that brings with it consequences that many of us would rather not pay for. Yesterday the Mail on Sunday, published an article by a freelance journalist called Ross Slater that on face value was a superficial attempt at investigative journalism.

The explosive growth of foodbanks and people visiting them in the last 4 years has taken us all by surprise, and indeed in the case of many within the Government and some of those who support the Government, it has led to scepticism or even cynicism that so many people are actually on the breadline. Hence the series of articles in yesterdays Sunday Mail. Sadly the 1M people who last year visited a Trussell Trust foodbank are precisely that. The breadline is defined as “A line of people waiting to receive food given by a charitable organization or public agency”. If 1M used a Trussell foodbank last year, bearing in mind that some could have visited a foodbank 3 times, potentially 60,000 people each week are visiting one of the Trussell schemes. That is a population the size of Loughborough. However the Government produces statistics that are a great deal more worrying which state that 13M people in the UK live below the poverty line. That is nearly twice the number of people who live within Greater London.

The story apart from the way in which the journalist went about his ‘research’ was actually quite a good article. It presented a clear picture of how people without any food, can visit a Citizens Advice Bureau and if they satisfy the CAB, they can access food vouchers which will provide them with food to last 3 days. In the story concerned one inference that could be drawn is that the CAB should have done more to test the veracity of the journalists story. However proving that you have nothing is actually quite a challenge. This difficulty is well understood by a small number of people who play the system. These men and women are very persistent and in some cases devious and sadly use their wits and intelligence to find ways around the system, which if they applied to finding work or contributing to society more positively would be a real asset. Because it is impossible to prove that you have nothing, it is far better for this breadline to allow some people to abuse it, than turn away others who are in acute need, but who lack the confidence or ability to express this. Thank God not everyone who is below the poverty line presents themselves at a foodbank, because they simply could not cope. One suggestion is that the Trussell network represents 1/3 of the foodbanks in the country. This would suggest that 3M people are visiting foodbanks altogether, still a significant number of people.

If Ross Slater had wanted to understand how the foodbanks worked, he could have offered to help out at his local scheme like another reporter did in the paper on a similar story. That would have avoided any criticism of him taking food from people in need. It might well have given him insight into the lives of people who are in so much personal need that they visit a foodbank to get them through the week. It might have led to a story about the way in which loan sharks, or some employers paying low wages or a few greedy landlords are contributing to the poverty that the foodbanks are addressing. However the Mail on Sunday, in accepting this story from Ross then compounded it by printing a headline that was a completely dishonest reflection of the story itself, the headline read “How our reporter got 3 days of Groceries….. No questions asked” when in fact the story makes it quite clear that the reporter was asked questions. Of course as a freelancer, Ross may have no way of challenging the sub editor who chose to use this story to send a message to the many readers who would have skimmed the paper reading only the headlines and looking at the pictures.

The freedom that people in my Fathers generation fought for, means that people like Ross Slater are entitled to use sloppy methods to research a story. The same freedom allows people to abuse breadlines, just as it allows loan sharks, selfish employers, greedy landlords to act the way they do and lying sub editors to put dishonest headlines on newspaper stories. However it also allows the rest of us to speak out when we think an injustice has been done. One such person is called Lizzi and she published this fantastic blog about the Mail on Sunday story. My own idea is that next weekend, instead of buying the Mail on Sunday as usual, that people who attend churches up and down this country, either donate the cover price to the Trussell Trust (or other local foodbank) or else buy a different newspaper. If for one week the usual 1.6M sales dropped, even if it was just by 10%-15% I think Geordie Greig and Marcus Rich (Editor and MD) would consider the price they have paid for the freedom to publish these stories in such a dishonest fashion. In any event write to the paper at news@mailonsunday.co.uk to register any disquiet you might feel just as I have done. I am loathe to promote the newspaper itself, however the story by Ross along with other articles that are just as misleading can be found here.